Sick of Big Box Retailers Stealing Our Commercial Electrical Referrals

We set up a referral program offering $250 gift cards to Siemens pros who send us commercial jobs, but damn, half the time they're pushing Home Depot's cheap service instead. Charged a facility manager $4k for a full panel upgrade last week and he still went with their $2.5k hack job. This crap is killing our margins on bigger installs.

eff that, i had a similar deal where the referral ghosted me for lowes after i quoted the siemens breakers. pissed me off so bad i didnt sleep.

big box is ruining everything for us legit sparky's. they get the referrals and send in some untrained hack with harbor freight tools.

don't trust referrals from anyone tied to home depot or lowes, 90% flake rate in my experience.

hell yeah, we should all boycott sending work their way. time to network with real contractors only.

screw the gift cards, make it cash under the table for referrals. keeps em honest.

watched electrican u video on this, he says same thing, big box eats your lunch if you dont fight back.

referral programs are a joke when retailers poach. i charge 20% more upfront to cover the losses.

same here, upped my siemens install fees to $300/hr after too many referrals went south.

LOL just tell the client the big box guy will probably fry their building with romex splices.

we're all getting screwed by this, need a group boycott or something in electricians network.

frustrated as hell, spent $500 on marketing for referrals and half vanished to home depot.

try tying referrals to specific brands like square d, makes it harder for them to undercut.

sharkbites for plumbing yeah, but for electrical? push actual wire nuts, not their wago wannabes.

big box doesnt know nec from a hole in the ground, let em fail and we'll clean up.

united front boys, stop feeding em referrals altogether.

this is why i only take direct commercial bids now, no middleman bs.

saw a post on r/electricians about this, everyone raging about lowes stealing jobs.

we get it man, same rage here after losing a warehouse light upgrade to their crap.

boosted my referral payout to $400 for eaton gear jobs, weeds out the cheapos.

funny how they advertise 'certified' but its just some kid with a youtube tutorial.

i feel your pain, been there with commercial panel swaps going to big box.

proud of my setup now, only do referrals from trusted gc's, hit $180k last quarter.

how do you vet the referral sources before offering the incentive?

gfi outlets are non negotiable, but big box skips em half the time on commercial.

start a fb group rant thread in electrical contractors, get the word out.

hit 200k this year by ditching referral programs entirely, straight networking.

controversial take: big box is better for simple stuff, we focus on complex commercial.